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PaulFairless's avatar
PaulFairless
Visitor
13 years ago

Channel Linking

Hi,

I'm developing a Roku channel, and one of the required features is to launch another channel when a user presses a key - from an advert for example. I know how to capture the key press but I don't know how to launch a 3rd party channel. Using the Roku External Control Protocol I can see how it's possible externally. Is it possible to issue these commands from within a channel?

I have seen an example in the Roku Newscaster channel so hope it is possible

Any help is most appreciated
Paul
Roku Developer Program

1 Reply

  • RokuJoel's avatar
    RokuJoel
    Binge Watcher
    13 years ago
    You just need the ID of the channel to launch. However, the channel must be published (double check though, this may have changed) before you can actually test this, so test with the id of a published channel and then put in the correct id before publishing.

    Here is an example:

    Function launch(id as string, seconds=5 as Integer) as String
        
        val=""
        timeout% = 1000 * seconds
        xfer=createobject("roURLTransfer")
        str = ""
        xfer.seturl("http://"+getip()+":8060/launch/11?contentID="+id)
        ?xfer.geturl()
        port=createobject("romessageport")
        xfer.setport(port)
        if (xfer.AsyncPostFromString(val))
            event = wait(timeout%, port)
            if type(event) = "roUrlEvent"
    			print "1"
    			str = event.GetString()
            elseif event = invalid
    			print "2"
                ?"AsyncPostFromString timeout"
                xfer.asynccancel()
            else
    			print "3"
                ?"AsyncPostFromString unknown event"
            endif
        endif
    ?
        return str
    End Function



    function getip() as string
    di=createobject("rodeviceinfo")
    temp=di.getipaddrs()
    temp.reset()
    while true
    aakey=temp.next()
    if not temp=invalid then 
    	return temp[aakey]
    end if
    end while
    end function



    - Joel